New Jersey Tap Ensemble in Morristown

Tappin’ at the BalletWhat and when:New Jersey Ballet and New Jersey Tap Ensemble together in “Tappin’ at the Ballet,” Saturday, 8 p.m.; New Jersey Tap Ensemble in “The Tap Connection,” Sunday at 3 p.m.Where: The Community Theatre, Mayo Center for the Performing Arts, 100 South St., MorristownHow much: Saturday tickets $22-$42; Sunday tickets $15. Call (973) 539-8008 or visit mayoarts.org.

Tap dancing is loud and feisty, while ballet flows and ripples silently. This weekend, however, New Jersey Ballet and the New Jersey Tap Ensemble will step outside their usual profiles when they occupy the Community Theatre in Morristown together.

In Saturday’s program, titled "Tappin’ at the Ballet," the tappers, led by Deborah Mitchell, will appear as guests of the ballet company. Then on Sunday, the Tap Ensemble will present a program all its own called "The Tap Connection."

As cross-disciplinary experiments go, "Tappin’ at the Ballet" sounds like a rocking party. The event places the two techniques side by side, with the members of both companies sharing a pair of lyrical yet clattering premieres.

Mitchell has revived an old work of hers, "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails," expanding it to accommodate an equal number of tappers and ballet dancers. She shares choreographic duties with James Kinney, a musical-theater artist of wide-ranging experience who helps bridge the disciplines.

Also, Maurice Chestnut, a longtime member of the Tap Ensemble — and, at 25, a rising star on the national tap scene — will partner with ballerina Christina Theryoung-Neira in a dramatic, contemporary duet called "All Blues," conceived and also jointly choreographed by Kinney.

"This idea has been on the back burner for more that 15 years," says Mitchell of the collaboration between the two distinguished local institutions. The idea moved forward, she says, after she coached New Jersey Ballet’s David Tamaki in the toe-tapping role of the Champion Roper in "Rodeo" — a historic precedent for such fusions — and after Chestnut performed with New Jersey Ballet as a guest artist last year. It helped that the founding director of New Jersey Ballet, Carolyn Clark, has a love of jazz dancing and musical theater.

According to Kinney, one way to resolve the differences between tap and ballet is to accentuate ballet’s rhythmic elements, creating a dialog in which a hoofer’s triple-time step may be matched by the multiple leg beats of a ballet dancer’s petit allegro.

Speaking of his work with Mitchell, Kinney says, "She stamps out a rhythm, and I then take that rhythm and subdivide it, or I make it legato and put it on the ballet dancers. That’s how it really works. We just start to bounce off each other. She’ll do a traveling ‘Maxie Ford,’ and then I’ll do piqué piqué."

To keep the ballet dancers from slipping on the hoofers’ slick wooden floor, they will rubberize the tips of their pointe shoes.

Chestnut says he may sacrifice some of his trademark speed in "All Blues," a fatal attraction number set to a recording of Ann Hampton Callaway singing Miles Davis. Yet, Chestnut adds, "I’m going to make sure that no matter what I do to blend the dance, I keep the tap as pure as possible. I’m not going to dumb-down the tap. I’m going to make sure both art forms are appreciated."